


A Trapezoid of Moon

by BadWolf256



Category: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22741417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolf256/pseuds/BadWolf256
Summary: There lie legends yet of the Circle of Suns, where once was buried Lore. But this is not the song of Thra; listen, and you will hear it, the melody burning its way through time, to the age of the UrSkeks once more. They are the same as any other Gelfling. They want the same as any other Gelfling wants. Love, peace, revenge, redemption. There lie legends yet of the Circle of the Suns, where once was buried Lore. But this is the story of what became of them, after - those heroes it led to the Heretic, and the lengths they would go, to save themselves and Thra.
Relationships: Brea/Onica, Gurjin/Seladon, Mera/Ry'ker, Rian/Deet
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. Prologue: Things That Grottan Know

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to my first dive into _The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance_! I'm not going to say that this is what I want to happen in season two of the show, because I enjoy making my characters go through terrible, sad things. And while I love myself an angsty story, I wouldn't wish that on any of them in canon. However, this is, to me, one way that things could happen, going forward. And most importantly, it's one way that things could happen, going forward, that I wanted to put out into the world. 
> 
> This will be a multi-chapter fanfiction. I can't promise a concrete posting schedule as school is a demon. But I will do my utmost to get a chapter of this story up every week, and update the author's notes if that isn't possible for whatever reason. I hope that you enjoy this story, and stick around to see where it goes if you like the vibe going on here!

It's been three hundred seventy trine since Maudra Argot saw the sky; but there are things that Grottan know. And this - the shaking, trembling veins that crept across the childling’s skin, isn't one of those things. _There will be time,_ the Maudra thinks to herself. And for many things, it may be true. But this - the lost and purpled gaze that Deethra turned towards Thra, presses at the warmth inside her heart. _What would Aughra think?_ She thinks to herself, for she had heard it too, how Aughra had wept when the childling stepped forwards. _She is eighteen trine,_ Maudra Argot reminds herself, but in the end, it doesn't matter. She is as much a childling to Maudra Argot as Maudra Argot is to Thra. There is nothing to be done for it. She can only pray to whatever old god had made Aughra that the same cannot be said for Deethra.

Deethra. 

How long has it been since that name has been spoken out loud? The Stonewood didn't call her that. Maudra Argot’s tired ears heard him calling her, too soft and too urgent for words. He ought to be moving slower, now, with the weight of the Dual Glaive weighing him down, and yet, with his mind all full of Deethra, he's made his movements fast. And Maudra Argot knows that, too. She’s been Maudra for eighty-three trine. She knows the look of Gelfling eyes blown wide with love and wonder. Stonewood, Sifa, Spriton, or Grottan, the look is always the same. She's even seen it during the war, in the haunted blue gaze of a fierce, biting Vapran named Seladon, whose daughter has taken her name. The Vapran weren’t supposed to fight, but Seladon had. Mayhaps until the day she died, she had; at the blade of a Skeksis, haloed in a bitter winter’s cold. 

Deethra, she thinks. _Deet._

Where was the Stonewood boy now? He is just where he is meant to be. He is putting his sword down and running to her. And Maudra Argot leans back. Her tired old bones take in the wind and smell the last smoke in the air. They fought a good battle, she thinks. If it must come to fighting, then there were worse battles to fight. Aughra said the blood they’d shed today was not of Thra, and she tells herself to remember it, to guard against the sleepless nights to come. There will be other fights in this war; worse fights, perhaps, then this. But she can be content in these; the things that Grottan know. That when it is over, Thra will take its children back, and give them a place to call home. And that, though the fighting will leave none of them unscathed, it is enough to have been there and seen it. Yes, she thinks - she will fight worse battles than this, before the order of Thra is restored. But Deethra - kind, gentle Deethta, whose brightness had called to the Nurlocks - gentle Deethra is not hers. 

*

It's been less than one eighth of an urun since she took the Darkness from Thra, and as she runs through the hillside that burns as it touches her skin, Deet thinks of the things Grottan know. The way that the Grottan caves' darkness once wrapped her in secrets and calm; the cool bark of the roots of the Sanctuary tree, and the low drone that Nurlocks make when they are grazing and at peace. The last silken dregs of Arathim who skirt low in the tunnels; how her mother, in days that the Vapran called spring, weaved sheets of them so soft and warm that Deet had thought she’d never feel the cold again. As she runs, she can hear someone calling her; but it is only Thra, screaming in agony at the tortured thing she’s become. 

Deet keeps running. 

Underneath her feet, the grass of the hillside blackens and burns. In the air by her fingertips, a swirling miasma bites at the branches of trees. In her gaze, Thra is tinted magenta and violet; the ends of her pale braids are sparking off white, and the darkened sky threatens to pour. She hears the beat of every heart and just the way to end it; and it has her doubled over, her hands cracked and spiderwebbed, shooting off tendrils of lavender into the lake at the edge of the hill as she heaves. A thick bile covers her throat; as she forces it out of her body, she thinks of what Aughra had said; so low she was sure that no one had heard it - _My child, you are not of Thra anymore. Aughra cannot see your part in the song; you are no longer of Aughra._ Maudra Argot told her once that everything was of Aughra; that what Aughra could not see was not worth seeing, and what Aughra could not hear would rain down fire and despair. And this is what Deet hears as the burden is lifted off of her shoulders and the sting of a curse expelled out. 

_Deet._

_Deet._

_“Deet.”_

But she will not turn around - she will not let herself see him. She can live with seeing Thra like this - just another life to take, another soul to crush and bury - but she will not let the Darkening take Rian. And his hands are too fleeting. Too kind to her, now that she’s taken the horrors inside. She can't understand it. 

“Deet,” He is saying, almost as if he knew, “Deet, I’m so sorry. Please, could you -” 

_“No.”_

And that is when she notices - the voice that spoke is not her own. The anger in it doesn't belong to Deethra. It snaps and it crackles between them, howling _She can’t be the same,_ and with the last bit of love in her heart, Deet prays to Thra that he’ll listen. 

Yet he speaks. 

“Deet,” He says, “I don’t care what you’ve done.” 

“Leave me- “ 

“No,” He tells her, “Deet. I - _Deethra._ I don’t care what you’ve _done._ Could you just let me see you - you don’t need to open your eyes.” 

She finds herself turning around. In the space behind her eyelids, the place where they’d dreamfasted spittles and hisses. Somehow, Deet knows she is crying; and that, when Rian wipes the tears from her eyes, it burns him so badly he flinches. And then it is done - the crying is over, as suddenly as it came. She is grounded there, in the breeze of the oceans of Sifa, and the sharp, gripping hold of the Darkening, tearing the seams of her mind. 

“Deet,” He is saying. His voice has gone lower and sadder. He sounds less like Rian than she sounds like Deethra, and in the back of her head - the part that she thinks might be hers - she wonders if war always does this, or if they  
were unlucky, this time. 

“Rian.” She says. His name tastes different on her tongue. “I’m-” 

“You did what you had to. Nobody hates you for that.” 

“No,” Deet says, and swallows, “Rian. I’m not part of Thra, anymore.” 

She hears the gasp that he takes, and wishes, for a moment, that she could open her eyes. But the illusion would be ruined, and Rian would be gone, as if he had never been real. Perhaps, Deet thinks, he hadn’t been; perhaps she has always been this, and has only just dreamed about being a Grottan who’d ventured out into the suns. 

But Rian’s voice is steady, and his fingers are on her, again. She smells the faint and sickly scent of him touching her; his skin smoldering where they met. 

“Deet,” He says, “None of us are.”

“You’re lying,” Deet says. Clings to it, desperately - so desperately that, for a moment, she thinks she might kill him, the next time he speaks. “Aughra told me  
\- She told me I’m not part of her.” 

And Deet knows - she knows - that if she opened her eyes, she would see Rian shrug. 

“You know,” He says, “There are lots of things Aughra can’t see. Like the war - She never thought we would fight. She never thought we would win. She told me so, herself.” 

“Did she?” Deet asks 

“Deethra,” Rian says, "Dreamfast with me.”

His hand is somewhere else, now. It makes a cool imprint on the stale and dying air. And though the darkness is strong inside Deet, her body still knows what to do. 

“Dreamfast with me,” Rian tells her, “See for yourself.” 

“I can’t,” Deethra says, “I’m sorry, I can’t-” 

“You can,” Rian says, “If you want to.” 

It could have been true. Her hand comes up, and Deet doesn't stop it. So it hovers, an inch or less away from his. And now it does something - it moves even further, until Deethra finds herself seeing the world through his eyes; the blood and the stench of the crumbling Skesis, the fresh, verdant green of her skin; Aughra. Pulling him, after her victory speech, to the side of the Crucible’s ruins.  
  
_Aughra sees all,_ she had told him, _But none of this was seen by Aughra. You have fought in Thra’s name, Rian of Stone-in-the-Wood. Aughra should have heard it in the song. But Aughra thinks the song is changing, now. The song of Thra is new, and the new song isn’t Aughra’s._

 _What about Deet?_ He had asked her, and as she heard him saying it - the sorrow, the pain, and the hope, her aching spirit nearly burst. _Mother Aughra, will Deet be alright?_

 _Aughra sees nothing,_ Aughra had said, _But Aughra’s looked inside herself. Aughra cannot see the Gelfling Deethra’s past; Aughra cannot say. Aughra thinks_ \- And Aughra had paused, her eye blinking tightly and fast - _Do not worry yourself over Deethra. Aughra thinks that the song is of her._

Then they are falling apart; she is scrambling onto her feet in the blackness, whealing backwards to nowhere, and Rian is following her. 

“Deet!” He calls, “Deethra-” 

“I can’t,” She can hear herself saying, and no greater truth has ever been voiced. For as she walks through the halls of her memories, fading and consumed, she cannot find it there. There are many things that Grottan know; there were many things that Deet knows, though she is a mere eighteen trine. Her eyes are bright and purple, and Rian is kind. But as Brea’d learned, there could only be so many things. And in the Caves of Grot, where quiet and silence were peace, there was no place for song.

* 

“You let her go,” Aughra says. The way that she moves is uncanny; no creature of Thra looked less like it, to Gurjin; and he had once courted a Spriton. “This is good. Deethra will come when she’s needed by Aughra. Sit.” 

There isn't a place left to sit, but Gurjin moves over anyways, and with a nod of his head, Rian is there. He isn't crying, yet. Not like he had done with Mira. He's done something worse; he's fallen completely and utterly silent, and it tells Gurjin what he had already known; this time, it had been something real. He doesn't give Rian his sympathies. Neither does anyone else. Instead, he does what his sister said he was best at; he holds out his hand, and waits for Rian’s to settle. 

“What happened,” He asks, with the hoarse, croaking voice of the aged, “While I was gone?” 

“Nothing” Says Gurjin, “Just Aughra. She’s -”  
  
“She’s Thra,” Rian snaps, “What did she say?” 

“Same thing she told you, I imagine.” Says Gurjin. “You know - that she’s not?” Gurjin sighes, then. “Look, mate. I could tell you every word Aughra said, or you could ask Seladon the important bits.” 

“I don’t trust Seladon.” Rian says.  
  
“She fought with us.” 

“She had the All-Maudra killed.” 

“She _is_ the bloody All-Maudra, Rian. And in case you hadn’t noticed -” And here he cocks his head to the side, “She’s done a good job of it, all things considered.” 

Rian looks at him strangely, then; with the same half-lit glancing that Aughra had made, when he’d run through the woods after Deet.  
  
“It should be Brea,” He says, in the end. Gurjin shakes his head. 

“Why?” Rian asks, then - “Give me one good reason it shouldn’t be.”  
  
“Because,” Gurjin says, “Aughra doesn’t think that it should.” 

“What does Aughra know?” Rian asks. His arms are folded over his chest, and his hair is blown out from the wind. Gurjin barely recognizes him; or maybe, just maybe, this is the Gelfling he was, and Gurjin had just never known it. 

“Brea isn’t experienced,” Gurjin says, “She can’t play the long game that well. Seladon - She knows the right way to be cruel, if she needs.” 

“Will we?” Rian asks.

“Aughra thinks that we will.”  
  
“And let me guess,” Rian says, “Aughra couldn’t be wrong.”  
  
“That isn’t the point, I don’t think.” A voice that isn’t charged; sweet wind chimes on the horizon. Brea. “When I first read about Aughra, it was more that she knew what things mattered, not what we’d do to obtain them.”  
  
“You’re speaking in past tense,” Rian says, “What could we hope to do about that?” 

Gurjin sneaks a glance at Brea that says at once _He’s hurting_ and _I wish that your sister was here._ Seladon - Where would Seladon go, now that she was really All-Maudra? Where would anyone go, with Stone-in-the-Wood held? And who would replace Maudra Fara? Who, after all was said and done, would have to stay behind?  
  
“Dream space,” Brea is saying, full of that childlike confidence, “I think that’s the answer. We’ll have to go to dream space again.” 

“Who?” Rian is asking, distant and forlorn.  
  
“Oh,” Says Brea, “Everyone, I’d imagine. Me and you; Gurjin, Naia, Kylan; Aughra, too, of course, and Seladon-”  
  
“What about Deet?”

There is quiet at Stone-in-the-Wood, except that there isn’t. Behind them, the soldiers of Stonewood are clearing the ground of the fallen and the broken foundation of houses succumb. But here - in this stretch of Stone-in-the-Wood, where Gurjin sits with the bravest Gelfling that he’s ever known and the princess who shouldn’t have fallen for him, the quiet’s as still as the dead.  
  
“Deet?” Brea asks, “I hardly think that Aughra would let _her_ into dream space, after -” 

“After what?”  
  
“She was very brave,” Brea says, “But dream space is vital. We shouldn’t press our luck.” 

“It isn’t ‘pressing our luck.’ It’s _Deet._ ” 

“Aughra says -”

“Prophets don’t know everything.” Gurjin can’t tell why he says it, but he knows that it needs to be said. Because this is what it comes down to - it’s what Aughra meant from the start. “We have to save ourselves. _All_ of us.”  
  
“All of us except Deet.”  
  
“No, Rian.” And Gurjin breathes out a sigh of relief, because _finally_ , Brea gets it, despite her creeping and uncertain hesitance, “ _All_ of us.”   
“Yeah?” Rian’s asking, and there is a second silent look; Brea seems almost like Seladon, if Seladon was near to a childling still.  
  
“Why not?” Brea asks, “It isn’t like it could hurt anything. Not any more than it’s been hurt, already.”  
  
Gurjin is shocked to realize it’s true:  
  
Thra is an open wound, bleeding. The Crystal of Truth is more shattered than any of them ever could be. There is nothing left to hurt here; merely a beautiful thing left to heal. And he wants to; no matter the fear that he harbors, he wants to bring Thra back to life. Breathe hope into every creature, even the ones that are cruel.  
  
“Rian,” He says, filled with a newfound conviction, “Have I ever lied to you?” 

“No.” Rian says.  
  
“Then listen to me. We’re going to fix this - No,” He says, holding a hand up to halt the train of Rian’s thoughts, as they threaten to spill their way out of him, “ _We_ are going to fix this. All of us - just like Brea said.”  
  
“Deet is one of us, Rian.” Brea says - her fingers lacing with Gurjin’s and building a wall. “You have to believe us, on that.”  
  
“I-”  
  
“You don’t,” Brea says, “And that’s fine. But Rian - What would Deet tell you to have, when nothing in Thra’s making sense?”  
  
“Hope,” Rian tells her, no trace of reticence left in his voice.  
  
“Very good,” Comes the head of the circle. Gurjin snaps back to attention; how had he forgotten that Aughra was there?  
  
“Mother Aughra,” Brea says, likewise regaining propriety, “I beg you forgive us-”  
  
“Aughra loves all of her creatures. Aughra would give you your time. Bah! You waste it so easily - Aughra worries by the time that you’re done all of Thra will be blazing! But Aughra begrudges you nothing; the world is all new to Aughra. Perhaps there’s no Thra left to save.”  
  
“If not Thra,” Brea asks, “Then what?”  
  
And the answer comes; whispered by Rian, and echoed by Gurjin’s own thoughts; the Drenchen young learned what to do, when the whole world was turning to dust. You clung to one good thing beside you; you became the salvation of one brittle light. And this is what Rian said, as the light faded from Stone-in-the-Wood; and this is what Gurjin thought as the warmth of Brea’s fingers soaked deeply into his skin and he felt that small thing glowing purple. If Thra fell, then Thra’d fall with Deet on its side. 


	2. Chapter One: All Of Our Saviors Are Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Another chapter! 
> 
> You may notice that this chapter doesn't have much of Deet or Rian in it; and for anyone who's wondering about that, watching this show, I felt like a _lot_ of interesting characters got the short end of the stick. So this is their story, too - _not_ just that of the main characters in the show. Deet and Rian will get their story concluded, but so will lots of other Gelfling - and I, for one, am pretty excited for that!

Onica’d thought that she loved him, back then. 

Back then, when the oceans were lilting and blue, and he’d taught her Thra’s symbols in a room that smelled of thick Dousan incense, with low Vapran light cast on the walls. Back then, when the All-Maudra’s daughter had asked for a symbol that must not be known, with the moon in her eyes and that fire inside her; that burning, unquenchable fire the Skeksis all loved snuffing out. She’d been twelve trine when Elder Cadia had taken her on. Her head had been filled with those quick, foolish things childlings dared dream about. They had crossed the ocean aloft on a webbing of wood; for six days, she had upchucked her meals over the side of the dock while Cadia wrote to the Maudra. 

On the seventh, he’d asked her her name. 

Onica knows everyone’s name. Cadia’d called her a Threader; he taught her everything, as long as it wouldn’t be useful. But there was use in names, or a power, at least, and though Onica knew it belonged to the Lords of the Crystal, she couldn’t feel guilty for taking a bit for herself. In nulroot powder and Sifa pottery, Onica felt Thra ebbing and tiding, a bright ribbon fighting at the stave of the Skeksis sharp hold. Within it, the fate of the Gelfling lay tumlt-tossed, and despite the hurt that it caused her, she could not stop the errant thought from rising up. _Elder Cadia’d know how to fix this. If he remembered, he’d know._

But he was not here to remember. And so Onica held what she could for him; the names of the Gelfling of Stone-in-the-Wood, the heartstrung Vapran princesses so bent on their singular goals; Rian, the hero, outcast from his castle and clan for a time. She couldn’t believe that they couldn’t believe in the world; it was almost too much for a Sifa to bear. Still, she supposed, she would bear it, if not for herself than the deep, haunted powers that beat like a drum in the air. Strange things were coming to Thra, but they’d be no stranger than Gelfling and Lords. 

And here - caught in the trap of the tent-mesh, surrounded by smells that were new to her nose - Onica yearned for the welcoming gaze of Cadia; but it was one of the princesses she got instead, setting a glass down of fine Stonewood ale. 

“You should drink,” She tells Onica, “You’ve been fighting, too.” 

Onica just shakes her head. 

“Where’s your sister?” She asks her. 

“Seladon’s with Mother Aughra.” 

“Aughra,” Breathes Onica. 

“I never thought that I’d meet her, either,” Brea offers, with a fleeting and tentative glance, “It’s good,” She says, and motions again towards the ale, “You should - “ 

“I’m not thirsty,” Says Onica, “There’s far too much work to be done.” 

“Mayhaps there is,” Brea says, “But that only means we need take better care of ourselves, here in the meantime.” 

The Vapran girl would see the world like that; like a bauble of love to be spread from the roots to the branches. It made Onica shudder in well-hid repulsion. What would Brea know about pain? She’d spent all her life in Ha’rar; the sea that clothed her clan’s home hadn’t yet boiled away. And Onica saw the sad manner she used when she looked at Rian; like the love of her life was right next to her, and yet still too far out to reach. 

“Thra’s future is dependent on us,” Onica tells her, “It isn’t our job to take care of ourselves.” 

“Have it your way, then,” Brea says, and with a boldness that Onica wasn’t expecting, takes up her glass and swigs half the ale down herself. “You can have the rest,” She says, “If you like. I’ll be off to see Seladon, now. Do you want me to say anything?” 

“I’m not allowed,” Says Onica - and here, Brea stands up so fiercely the glass falls and breaks where it lands into three perfect shards. It is a rare, futile moment of anger. Onica feels it approach her and worm its way into her bones. 

“Onica,’ Brea says, “I’m sorry, about what I did to your Elder - But you are a _Gelfling_. All of our voices have import right now. If you need speak with your Maudra, she’ll hear what you’re needing to tell her.” 

“No,” Says Onica, “Your Maudra. Thra’s Maudra; not mine.” 

“You’ll talk to Mother Aughra, then,” Brea says, and then she is pulling her - off of her seat, the strands of her pale Vapran hair whipping like snakes in the wind.  
“Aughra will hear from her children.” 

Stone-in-the-Wood was yet odd, to the Sifa. But Onica was given no choice; as Vaprans do, Brea has taken the charge, and it falls to her to follow. She has an uncanny habit of dodging; as if, if she didn’t touch Thra, the residual darkness inside of its soil couldn’t sneak through the cracks in her skin. 

“There isn’t any,” She finds herself saying. “It went to that Grottan girl. Deethra.” 

“You knew Deet?” Brea asks. The camp is rushing past them; it blurs by them so quickly that she couldn’t focus on any one thing, and the victory of battle has faded into a languid, strategized haze. 

“Deethra,” Onica says, “Of the Caves of Grot, and the Sanctuary Tree. Of the Darkening, now.” 

“You shouldn’t say it like that,” Brea says. She’s adopted some measure of grief, and Onica’s struck - Where had it led her, that journey that Brea had made? Wherever it had, it had taught her the secrets the Dousan kept safe; that death was more loss than returning to Thra, for the Gelfling who haven’t returned. 

“But she is,” Onica says, “She is of the Darkening, now.”

“We can be more than one thing,” Brea tells her, as stubbornly as entitlement allows, “You’re more than just a Sifa; Rian is more than a soldier.” 

“And the Gelfling are more than just clans?” 

“ _Onica_ ,” Brea tells her, “The Gelfling are - The Gelfling are _Thra_.” 

“Not all of them,” She finds herself saying, and sneaks a glance at the side of the camp, where a knowledge-master lies in a bed of ruinous intrigue, his salt-curled hair coming up gray at the roots, “Not the Lords.” 

“You Sifa and the Lords,” Brea says. Dimly, Onica remembers their path heads towards Aughra, but they’ve stopped in the middle, and the place Brea holds her at thrums with the coolness of slick Vapran ice. “What _are_ they to you?” 

“Aughra,” Onica says. The poison is thick in her throat, “I don’t have a thing to tell Aughra. That’s what you’ll say; the Sifa will say what they know, but it isn’t our place to seek knowledge. You don’t know it yet, princess, but some things - some things are better untold.”

*

In the depths of the Grottan caves, voices bray _We were here first_. It is not the Ascendancy’s voice, but it might as well be. All of Thra screams that truth; it is just the Arathim who know how to look, and how, when the fighting gets rough, to skitter away from the suns. They dream of gray basalt and tunnels that eddied and churned; of different things than the Gelfling, but no less of Thra, in the end.

Tonight, with the best of the fighting behind them, they dream of an ivory girl.  
Her face is as soft as a teardrop, and her warrior’s braids have unwound, but she possesses the beauty that Gelfling carry alone, and never could see ’til the day that their souls went to Thra. The Ascendancy’s touched her, and it means something, that - Aughra had told them as much. It was Aughra’s shrill terror, inside of their heads, that had warned them to go on the warpath. Touching a Gelfling was stealing from Thra, Aughra’d said’ it was ripping the heart of their bonds from the round of their fists where they clutched it, and didn’t the Arathim know? _We are not Arathim_ , the Ascendancy’d told her, _We are the Ascendancy_. 

But stealing was stealing, Aughra had told them, and dying as final as that; and though the Ascendancy’d fought in wars plenty, no death had yet robbed it of breath quite as much as the Gelfling girl had. The part they called eyes had been blue; when she was sad, the tips of the part they called ears had twitched downwards. She’d been the Ascendancy, too. 

With the morning there would come a rallying cry; a herd of Arathim, borne again in the light of the moon. _We are the Ascendancy_ , the Ascendancy thought, and the Ascendancy couldn’t cry. But it ached, with more instinct than anything else, to regain the small treasure it stole - the feelings that Thra’s Gelfling had, and how it had felt them; those clear, lucid days when it had been some part of Tavra, and Tavra some small part of it; once sleep, however fated, had leapt away on thin Threader legs.

*

Tangled up in puppet lines, UrGoh looks down towards the mist that the Archer had been. It was only the sand, spitting the usual film in his eyes, but UrGoh imagines that sparks of the Archer are floating there still, and taking the sea winds to the tall crystal spires of Ha’rar. There is a body yet pressed against him; Thra called the creature a Podling, so UrGoh calls it that, too. Like so many creatures borne from the goddess, the Podling’s slight frailness shakes with the depths of its mourning, and the breezes bears it out as it will.

“He… has… part of… the song,” UrGoh says. 

“Oh yes, oh yes,” Replies the festering wound of his opposite half, “The Podlings are sensors - they sense things like that.” 

“Which… one… was she?” 

“The peace, the peace,” The Heretic answers, “She was the one with the power.” 

“Is,” UrGoh tells him, “Is -” 

“Gone,” Says the Heretic, “Nothing to be done. Hush - friend-slave! Your howling does nothing, does nothing!” 

“He… mourns,” UrGoh mutters, “I… remember… that.” 

Indeed, there’s not been a day since it happened when UrGoh has not felt the keening pain of separation, or seen that realm where they’d merge into what they’d once been. They knew not what they missed, those together-ones; the Gelfling and Fizzgigs and Podlings who’ve never felt their souls cleaved in two by the blade. 

“Hup,” UrGoh says, “You are… one… with Thra. How does it… feel… Podling?”  
But lost, the Podling gives UrGoh no answer. The Heretic, cloaked in his war paints and snapping in well-waited relish, breathes out the need that he radiates: 

“It doesn’t,” He says, a laugh on the tip of his beak, “Skeksis can never be whole.” UrGoh remembers it, though; being an UrSkek, a singular being; feeling the Heretic’s skin when he touched his own arm, and hearing the Heretic’s thoughts. No Urdroop wine could burn as true as feeling that again; as knowing, in the depths of his heart, that it was no longer beating for two. Beside him, the Podling Hup wails and beats his spoon against the tower’s draping threads; the arrows the Archer’d shot rust in the hot desert heat. UrGoh turns his head to the window and looks down towards the mist that the Archer had been. When the Crystal Skimmer fills it, he backs himself into his opposite half, sweeping the Podling along with the edge of his robes. 

“Ry’ker,” Says the Heretic, “What news you bring, then, what news?” 

“We’ve held Stone-in-the-Wood,” Says the purple-haired Gelfling. “It was told in the sands.” He shrugs, working out the kinks of a long day’s riding, and drops his traveling pack onto the brittle slab of limestone UrGoh’d christened Lore, “We’ve held it,” He says, “But it will not be for long.”

*

Of all the things her mother’d instructed her in, Seladon is quite sure that being the All-Maudra wasn’t one. The rituals were there; the abdication of the Living Crown, the return of the Maudra’s to Thra, and the order that Gelfling would tithe in. The sense of duty was there; the sense of kindness and charity Gelfling owed to their fellows, so long as it was ceded foremost to the Lords. How did Maudra Argot do it, alone with the Grottan for hundreds of trine? How did Maudra Ethri navigate the unforgiving trade currents? These were the kinds of lessons that Seladon should have learned while her mother was bowing at the feet of the Skeksis and begging Thra for their mercy in lesser Maudras’ steads - _No,_ Tavra’s voice tells her, disembodied and ethereal, as Seladon once thought the Castle of the Crystal would be. _Not lesser Maudras, just other than us._ And wasn’t that just like Tavra, the bravest of them? Seladon had always heard she’d make the Skeksis proud one day, but it was Tabra, the whispers in the hallways had told her, that would do the same for their mother.

As a childling, Seladon’s mother told her of her dreamfasts with the Maudras; their hands touching, their minds connecting, and the ties that bound Gelfling to Thra wrapping them up in their being. There were other Maudras, then; other women who raised up daughters to rule the clans when they were gone. She had seen the passing of history for more trine than Seladon could envisage; and the cycle had continued, for long before the Skeksis took their throne. 

It’s a hard road, the All-Maudras, her mother had told her. _Duty first, Seladon.  
_ And it was a dangerous road. Maudra Fara’s last breath proved it; Seladon had barely heard it over the smoke and the din of the battle. All of her knowledge and caring for all of those Stonewood - it was finished, just as if it never had been. And _Rian_. Seladon didnt’ know what to think of Rian. She’d known him for less time than she’d been All-Maudra, and Aughra said that the fate of Thra rested on him. It should have meant nothing to her, less than nothing, and yet. 

What is he like, this hero? Seladon doesn’t _know._ Worse, she doesn’t know how to ask, or who she would go to, for the answers she seeks. Not the other Maudras; they have their own clans, their own struggles to put aside in the name of the Crystal. Not Brea - Brea, who can’t stand to look at her as she hid behind their familial connection. Seladon knows the creeping repulsion that lurks in her; she knows it as well as she’d felt it, herself, for those brief days after their mother died, her mind yet clouded with the Skeksis sense of grim responsibility. Certainly not Aughra - her concerns are all of Thra and how to save it, not the feelings playing in a single Gelfling’s eyes. It leaves Seladon with no one, except perhaps the Sifa healer, or one of the Stonewoods who camped by the makeshift firepit. Seladon has never seen Stonewoods or Sifa or Spriton apart from the tithes; their slim hopes and clear dreams are far too complex for her to comprehend. 

“All-Maudra,” Seladon hears, with a tone of being underwater - though, of course, it is she, herself, who feels that she was drowning, “Your precense is required at the ceremony.” 

“The ceremony?” Seladon asks. 

“Maudra Fara,” The Gelfling - the _Drenchen_ \- says. Seladon is Thra’s All-Maudra, and she has spoken two words to a Drenchen, the entirety of her life,  
“They’ll need to -” 

“They don’t,” Seladon tells him. The Drenchen’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head with an untold vehemence, “I didn’t mean - I was there,” She says, “When Fara - She’s in Thra, by now. I saw.” 

“Good,” Says the Drenchen, whose name she does not know, “That’s good. She was a good Maudra, Fara.” 

“She wasn’t yours,” Seladon says, “I’m sorry. I’m not - “ 

“You’re All-Maudra,” The Drenchen says. He seems too forgiving, his nonchalance disarming, “It can’t be easy, can it?” 

“Mother would have said,” Says Seladon. _To Tavra,_ she adds in her head. 

“You’re - “ 

“Gurjin,” The Drenchen says, “It’s okay, you know. Even the All-Maudra can’t know about everyone.” 

“This isn’t everyone,” Bites out Seladon, “This is - “ 

“They’re your people,” He says, “If you’re thinking like that, shouldn’t that be enough?” And then he looks away; Seladon doesn’t know how she tells. “‘M sorry, All-Maudra. I meant no disrespect.” 

“It’s fine,” Seladon tells him. Strangely, she finds that it is. It’s a good night, she realizes, for Fara’s spirit to go. The song is thick around them. The grass is tall and fine, and Mother Aughra is here. IT’s the kind of night that Seladon would’ve killed for in Ha’rar, where the frost was always spitting and the nights were always cold. “It’s beautiful.” 

“Stone-in-the-Wood?” The Drenchen, Gurjin, asks. “I did my training here, for guard. It wasn’t very beautiful back then.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Says Seladon, “I never saw it.” 

“I think it’s that - Well. I think it’s that we’re fighting for it, now. Things are always better when they mean something for once.” 

“It didn’t before?” She asks him - but Gurjin doesn’t need to answer that. It hangs between them, the phantom specter of their over three-hundred trine’s failing; _It didn’t, but it should’ve. It didn’t, not to us._

“The All-Maudra,” He tells her, “Doesn’t even really matter, to the Drenchen. It’s more like - We just do what we think we’re supposed to, and hope to Thra that it works.” 

“It is,” Says Seladon, “Working. We won.” It hits her, then, that she should be proud of them, for that - that when the rest of the Gelfling were cheering, she should’ve meant the ones she’d pushed out of her throat. 

“We held,” Says Gurjin. She can see the last hints of his breath coming past her.“Tomorrow - “ 

“We’ll hold,” Seladon tells him, adopting that voice her mother had used, so often, when trying times approached. 

“We’ll hold,” Says Gurjin. Smiling, she hears. “I can live with that.” 

“Here?” She asks, “At Stone-in-the-Wood, for the rest of forever?” 

“For as long as Thra,” Gurjin tells her, “Why not? It couldn’t be so bad.” 

“It’s not Ha’rar,” She tells him, “I’ve heard that the rations are terrible.” 

“We’ll be fine,” Gurjin says, “There are Fizzgigs around.” 

She laughs, then - properly laughs, like she supposes Brea had done, before she had learned what they are. 

“You know,” Gurjin says, after some imperceivable time, “You’re not half a bad All-Maudra.” 

“You’re not half a bad palace guard,” Seladon tells him,” Have you ever considered - “ 

“No,” Gurjin tells her, final and swift. 

“Why?”

“There’s no room for a Drenchen as Paladin,” Gurjin says, “It’s not done.” 

“Neither is this,” Seladon tells him, “I only meant to say - Thra’s song is changing now. Aughra said it herself. I’m All-Maudra, not ignorant.” 

“Give my place to Rian.” Gurjin tells her. 

“Rian.” 

“He deserves it,” Says Gurjin, “He’s the one who’s - “ 

“And you don’t matter?” Asks Seladon, brimming with the stubborn pride that her mother instilled inside her. 

“Not like Rian,” Gurjin tells her. 

“You’re a Gelfling,” Says Seladon, and in the crystalline certainty of knowing what  
now must be said, she finds confidence in herself. “I am your All-Maudra, as much as anyone else’s. You could have a place at my side as a a Paladin. All I’m asking is that you consider it.” 

As she whips around to descend towards the gathering circle of Gelfling making council by the firepit, she catches a glimpse of his wild braids and faltering sureness, lit by the glow of the flames - and hears, as though by accident, the hushed promise of _I will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are a couple songs I listened to on repeat while writing this chapter: 
> 
> _Shrike_ , by Hozier, 
> 
> _New Soul_ by Yael Naim, 
> 
> And 
> 
> _everything i wanted_ by Billie Eilish


	3. Chapter Two - Those Silly Dreams We Forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I'm back with a new chapter of this, and I have to say - I'm so, so excited to share this one with you. My favorite character plots start up in this one, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

The old books said that Skeksis fight and Skeksis squabble; but Skeksis never die. And when push comes to shove, Skeksis don’t sell out their kind. Therefore, the Chamberlain decides the only reasonable conclusion is that SkekMal never learned how to read. 

If he had - that foolish Hunter, obsessed with his trophies and tongues - he’d have known not to hunt after Rian and ruin the plot of their war. If it was not for foolish Hunter, Gelfling would not have escaped. Arathim would not have turned. So really, it is not the Chamberlain’s fault. 

When the Emperor asks her what she is on about, this is what SkekSil the Chamberlain says. But she isn’t saying it today. 

Today, the day after retreat, they gather at the seat of Mother Aughra’s crystal to burn the remains of their dead. _Ash doesn’t burn,_ she had said - knowing not what else to say - as they dragged their way out from the ruins of Stone-in-the-Wood. It did not matter, said the Emperor. One building burned or a hundred buildings burned. More Skeksis had died in the battle than Gelfling. It meant that Skeksis were slighted. It meant that Skeksis - not impudent, cowardly Gelfling - would build up their army and win. 

Indeed, it was said, by the Emperor himself, that while fighting Gelfling, SkekMal’s revival accompanied vision; vision of fire and pain for Gelfling, and victory for Skeksis. Chamberlain is disgusted by it; by now, the Emperor should know better than trusting in SkekMal; betrayed by the weakness of arrogant Archer. But it is more than nothing; and nothing is what Gelfling have. So Chamberlain imagines it as Fizzgig liver, melting on her tongue; there is war to be mastered, and position to keep. There was SkekMal and General to deal with, now. And the Skeksis would see they were dealt with.

*

At any one moment there were legends that eight million thoughts danced throughout Aughra. Whatever truth those legends spoke is flimsy; there were thoughts, yes, but they did not belong to Aughra. They belonged to all of Thra. Each Gelfling and Threader, each blade of grass and stick of metal; all were a thread in the tapestry. It had been that when Aughra made move, so too did the thoughts that she held; and in moving them to the rhythm of Thra, so Mother Aughra had saved it. So it was not that Aughra danced to a different song; just that she knew not the steps of this one particular movement, for the key in which it had been written was darkness. Darkness was of Thra - Aughra had been a fool not to have known - but darkness was not of Aughra. That was just trying to win.

Rather, there were the Gelfling - they, in their circle, were planning for war. Bah! Aughra is thinking, _These wars. What will Thra gain from these wars?_ But perhaps the answer, too, was in Aughra; it would gain a movement in less sad a key. A coda, it would gain, of the joyful parts of the song. Aughra hears the thoughts of the Gelfling, and Aughra hears their words: 

“We’ll not lay here like sitting ducks.” It is the hero of Thra, chosen by Thra, whom Aughra would not have chosen. He is clouded by something, the faintest echo of thread. His words are pretty; his strategies brutal and true. Yet the echo rings violet; Aughra fears for his soul. That thread - 

Aughra sees it. Where once it was ardent green, the wool of it’s been soaked in the purpling Darkness of Thra; a thickening, pulsating Darkness. So dark a Darkness that it’s changing the movement of song; the rhythm, the tone, the inflection. There is naught to be done by Aughra against it - 

And it hurts. Every pain in her soul is this - That in ridding Thra of the Darkness, one of Thra’s children was taken! The life and the thread of that child - it yet burns inside of Aughra and all. At the council - The All-Maudra, Seladon the Wise (Ah, it is wisdom that turns the unrighteous onto Thra’s path.). The other Maudras - Soft-spoke Maudra Seethi, her skin dyed the blues of death’s cloak; ashamed Mera of the Spriton riders, her stories keeping her lively; Sifa’s learning Ethri, aspiring for her clan; Maudra Argot of Grottan, readjusting her eyes to the sunlight; at the edge, the stern, determined Maudra Laesid, and the space where Maudra Fara should be sitting. These women - these Maudras! - They are as strong as tall trees and cool, flowing water. Aughra finds much comfort in them, and never would tell them their rule was put forth by their lessers. Nor will they be what keeps burning the fires of Thra - 

That job is for others; Aughra hears distantly their names. To be sure, Rian, and then his ghosts; the Darkening and Mira. Too Gurjin, Drenchen of fortitude. Too the Vaprans of Ha’rar - Brea the Know-Nothing Loremaster, Seladon the Wise, and the others. Those are a trouble to Aughra, the _others._ Their thread once Tavra now is Togetherness. To be sure, Togetherness, too. Onica Knowing-All, to be sure. To be sure, as well, the Darkening - Darkness now is the song and has a part to play. Others too are heard inside Aughra, but they are not of Thra, so Aughra cannot. 

Aughra can hear though, them. 

Brea, the Know-Nothing Loremaster: 

“I think we should go to Ha’rar. There’s the biggest library in the world, there, and so was Lore. If the answers can’t be found with the Vapran, they can’t be found anywhere.” 

Oh; poor, stupid childling. 

“What, all of us? Can it fit us all - Ha’rar?”

“There’s nothing Ha’rar can’t do. The Vaprans built it, Gurjin.” 

“Hush.” 

There. 

“The Vaprans, Brea, are Gelfling. We are Gelfling. Remember that.”

She tries her best, that one. 

“But Seladon-” 

“The All-Maudra is right. The Sifa have seen it. There is not to be separation; we cannot go where they think that we will.”

“Then we’ll go to Ha’rar.” Maudra Laesid - not quite the right path, not quite. “If they expect us to go there, and know that we know they expect it, that’s exactly the place that we _should_ go.” 

“If they think we’ll go to Ha’rar and assume we won’t go to Ha’rar, wouldn’t that be just what they want?”

“SkekSil.”

Ah.

“Not the others.” 

“How would you know?” Maudra Argot. Seeking knowledge, that one. Bah! It is good, but wasting. Time does not wait; not even for Aughra, of late. Seeking ‘what will we give them?’ - War! Thra answers, sweet war!

“Bah!” Aughra says, “Because she is Onica Knowing-All - Don’t look so surprised, child, it’s the name you’ve been given by Thra. And you - Hmph, you. Ought to listen, to someone who knows - Well go on then! We don’t have all day!” 

There is a swallow, the hissing of down; Onica Knowing-All opens her eyes. Searching, she was, for the words Aughra knows she’s a-hiding. 

“SkekSil,” She starts, “The Chamberlain. Elder Cadia taught me their names.”

“Who was the one that we killed?”

It’s the first that he’s said in true spirit, that one, and a dullness to it, Aughra sees.

“SkekMal,” She tells him, “The Hunter. He takes the tongues of his victims as trophy. Chases their scent on the wind. It sweeps from the seas of Ak’aten; carries the breath across Thra. In the old days, my people the Sifa called it the Life Road.”

“ _Da’sar._ ” Aughra hears. A shudder it brings up through her, “It is a Dousan’s secret. Forgive me -”

“What is it?” He’s asking, for not one thing more than the sounding of it; the needing to fixate, to chase, “ _Da’sar?_ ” 

Onica Knowing-All answers, “ _Da’sar._ The wind route of Death’s Crystal Skimmer. It exists on a separate plane, in the old Dousan tales. Kira and Os’Yla, the young lovers, were made to be apart by Death; but in those days, it was not known by the Gelfling of the Crysal Desert what became of the spirit, when Death had ridden through. It was not known; returning to Thra. So in desperation, as Death stole off with Os’Yla, clad in blue on the back of a creature unknown, Kira thrust a hand out to stop him. ‘Lord Death’, she told him, ‘My name is Kira, of the Gelfling of the Crystal Desert. I beg you wait a moment’s rest to hear my claim’.” Onica All-Knowing looks; not at the Maudra, whose story it is and whose truth, but straight into Aughra. And Aughra’s nod tells her, _Go on._

So Onica continues.

“Lord Death,” She continues, “Did not know of this claiming. It was done in the desert alone; it was an ancient rite, but it existed only in telling. The doing of it had never been done; the words of it never invoked. Kira had learned them, though, the same as all the Gelfling who called the desert their home, and so when Lord Death stopped in his tracks, she did not hesitate, and found that she was not afraid. She sang the words that bound Lord Death to her, in the most ancient language of Thra - the very song which makes it - and Lord Death was trapped. ‘You are mine’, Kira said, then, ‘For I have claimed you, in the name of Thra, the world we live in. You are bound in the circle and lock of my claim. Death, you will answer me now. I am given the right to ask of you something; you may ask something of me in return’.” 

“‘Lord Death’, Kira asked, ‘I would follow _Da’sar_ to the land of unliving, and, coming back, I would take my Os’Yla with me.’ Lord Death considered. And this cannot be said - Death is Death, and can’t be known by Gelfling minds. So say the tales of old. But Death did know one thing the fierce desert Gelfling did not - Death knew himself to be Thra, and the place where he went to be Thra. The Gelfling Kira could wind the _Da’sar_ forever and still she would not be able to enter the place where she was. ‘I have laid my claim on you, Lord Death, and asked my favor,’ she spoke, ‘Yet I am not so ignorant as to run from what I command. You may ask one thing in return of me, and by my claim I bade you ask it now.” 

“A smile curved Death’s face then - for though he was bent on his purpose, he hummed with the beating of Thra, and could not be taken apart from it. ‘Kira of the Gelfling of the Crystal Desert,’ he spoke, ‘A favor from Death is worth two in return. I bade you take this creature, and I bade you take a name.’ ‘What name, Lord Death?’ Kira asked him. ‘From now henceforth ’til the ending of Thra, your people shall be the Dousan.’ ‘What does it mean?’ Kira asked him. Death only shook his head, and set his cloak shaking with it. ‘You will know it,’ He told her, ‘The next time we meet’. Kira accepted his terms.”

Then there was a silence; such a silence, Aughra thinks.

“They are not yours,” Says Seethi, “It is a _Dousan_ tale.”

“It is a tale of Thra,” Onica says, “So Elder Cadia taught me.” 

“Your elder speaks lies.”

“But you believe it, then,” Says Brea, “The lie? If it’s your people’s story, you must!”

“Brea.” 

“I’m sorry, but -” 

“Bah!” Aughra says, “Distraction; no time! How has it come to distraction? There is much to be done!” 

And there was; the eyes of the Gelfling reflected the truths to come inside Aughra. There was a war to be fought, there was; but before there must come other things. The choosing of a new Stonewood Maudra. The leaving of Stone-in-the-Wood. The finding of these Mystics that urVa had promised. And, most importantly, 

“How was it done?” Brea asks. Appeals directly to Onica Knowing-All; good. “This killing of Skeksis? Onika - do you know what happened?” 

“I know only of Thra,” Says Onica, and like that, the spell is broken. “What Elder Cadia taught me I hold in my heart, but nothing more than that, I fear.”

“It is a Sifa sentiment,” Comes the quietest voice at the table. 

“Maudra Mera. We’ve not heard a word out of you.”

“Bless, All-Maudra. I meant only to say - it is a Sifa sentiment. Like _Da’sar_ is a Dousan sentiment. For us, the Spriton, Thra’s spirit bears a different name.”

“For all of us,” Intones the Drenchen Maudra gravely, “And the childlings too young to know - Forgive me.” 

The hot _I’m not a childling_ dies on the Loremaster’s lips.

“What do you call it, then?” Rian asks, “Maudra Mera?”

“The spirit of Thra?” Asks the Maudra. Her eyes are unfocused and glazed, “It is the wind in the hairs of a Landstrider, the quivering of an arrow in the bow. It is writing and Arathim silk. It is Aughra,” She says, and Aughra shakes her head. Oh, and how mistaken. “It is Aughra,” She tells, “And us.”

Far another promise comes; from nigh the youth of Aughra, if such a thing there was. A peaceful, hoping thing, that breathes not but flowers, They are lilac, but not of the Darkness - they fall between. And smelling the sweet of their pollen, Aughra cries out in release - There is salvation! They tell her - Salvation for the fallen lost!

Rian sees it, too. That is the hope of his holding; that is what terrified Aughra? She cannot think of it now. All of the legends are known to her; it is only the words that elude. But the melodies of them are tightness and order; harmonious rapture, carried on what-it-is-called. Da’sar. The Life Road. The wind in the hairs of a Landstrider; the quivering of an arrow in the bow; writing and Arathim silk. The melodies are Aughra, she thinks.

The melodies are Aughra, and the melodies are we.

*

There is no Dousan capital. The Dousan have no Domrak; no Stone-in-the-Wood; no Ha’rar. The Dousan have the desert, and the Desert gives them life. The Skeksis is giving him water; and Ry’ker bites back a laugh. How is it that everyone thinks that the Desert does not provide? It is a separate water; it flows forth from the jewels at the heart of the strong Crystal sandhills. And there is Skimmer-milk, as fresh and cold as any after-sunset. The Desert would not let its children die - Ry’ker would scream, if he could.

But the Heretic talks like a Skeksis. The Dousan have no love for Skeksis. They are not of the Desert, these birds who lay waste over Thra. To the morning, it should have been Sand-Cranes. They have no words to lead them to ruin. Their wings stretch opal and fine. There is no Dousan word for Skeksis. There is no such thing in the Desert as Skeksis; there is no such thing in the stars. The Mystics, of Ur; they are closer. They hold power, as the Desert, they seek their own path, as the grains of sand do, where they may be found. Ry’ker feels them now; they’ve a nest in his heart and his hair; let no man claim to cut the locks that give the Desert home.

And another new thing; a Podling. There is no such thing in the Desert as Podlings. Ry’ker thinks it might be a shame.

“Deet,” It says. “Hup failed Deet.”

“Who is this Deet that you speak of?” Ry’ker asks. His hosts will be staging a puppetry; it didn’t take much brain to know. 

“Deet is protected by Hup! Deet is failed by Hup!” Says the Podling, and Ry’ker begins to understand its mind. 

“Ah,” He says, “ _A’meera a’œnga,_ ” The Podling looks in interest. “You are not of the Thra as the rest,” Ry’ker says, “You have your own words, Podling. Fear not of them. The Dousan have our own words too.”

A thought comes through the Deser, then, to Ry’ker.

“I can teach you them, if you’d like.”

The Podling’s eyes have turned in wonder; the wonder of something greater than one, as the Desert is. Ry’ker finds himself smiling at him, quite without meaning to. 

“This puppet show,” He asks, “Have you seen it before?”

“Hup has watched with Deet!” He says, and turns downcast, but Ry’ker shakes his head.

“We’ll start now, then,” Says Ry’ker. “ _A’meera a’œnga._ ‘In dying, there is strength.’”

Hup gazes. Ry’ker exhales more. 

“Can I tell you the poem that it comes from? Would you be angry at me?” 

“Hup will listen.” The Podling says. Mesmerized, as Ry’ker had been, when first he had witnessed the beauty of suns’light and sand. Ry’ker swallows. The telling of this has not been done outside of the Desert. Not with the Skeksis in ear. Yet the suns’ Circle rises, and Ry’ker feels the bones of some old lore. It is there, with them, in the room. He stretches deep, and begins. 

“ _A’meera a’œnga, ts’a’tia a’meera. A’lìa, a’saœrula; ts’a’lìa a’lìa._ It’s a short poem - but those are the best kinds of words.”

“Deet,” Hup says. 

“Yes,” Ry’ker tells him, “The name of that Gelfling is short. But you have not failed her; remember, Podling. _A’meera a’œnga. Ts’a’tia a’meera. Ts’alìa, alìa._ ”

*

The wind in the hairs of a Landstrider. The quivering of an arrow in the bow. Writing and Arathim silk; a peaceful, hoping thing.

Mera is seven trine old. 

Her mother was born in Sami Thicket, the holiest city in Thra. Her mother before her bore her aloft from a pelt of thick Landstrider fur; the suns and the stars as her roof. Around her the Thicket’s field trembled and yearned to accept its Maudra-to-be. She’d had wild curls of ember and bronze; she was twelve when she skinned her dear friend to make up her rider’s akal. The Strider that carried her had borne the name Aileen. When the cloak was finished, of purest gray and softest white, she’d taken it up in her stride. 

From the time she could walk, Aileen had tended the crops. The Spriton rode because they understood the ground they road on. They knew that words and water made it grow. They knew to put scarfs over their hair because Gelfling, like corn, needed shade from the heat of the suns. They knew what the world felt like; underneath their fingertips, from the top of a Strider, panting as it loped into a gallop. 

_‘We are the same’_ she heard once, from the Gelfling who worked at the land. But Aileen had known the sad truth of their clan; she worked far better land than them. She slept on real pelts; ate red meat, not the thin, sour stalks of the plants that had died. And that was how it was meant to be. Some Gelfling slaved, and some Gelfling mattered. As it had been, so it would be, until, like crops in the winter, Thra’s spirit withered and died. It was the job of the Maudra to know it, and the job of her people to slave. 

So the Spritons went on as they were.

Mera was born in Sami Thicket, the holiest city in Thra. Her mother bore her aloft from a pelt of thick Landstrider fur, the elegant domes of the Lirial Citadel shielding her from a storm. The man from a noble family Aileen had married was off, on a business trip in Ha’rar. Tariffs were being lifted. The Vaprans understood that they needed their crops. And there were Spriton to harvest it for them. Aileen saw them on the road, sometimes, when she rode aback her Royal Strider. They were sun-weathered. Their skin was cracking and sallow; their eyes were sunken cherry pits. When she saw them, Aileen did as all Maudras must. She spurred her Strider on faster, and turned from them in disgust. She looked down at her daughter, when she was born, and thought to herself, _Here is a new kind of Spriton. A Spriton who will rightly enforce the order of things. I can teach her to revel in luxuries, show her what things to avoid. She will find a young man of good standing, and carry on my name._

Yet Mera was not of her blood. She did not look like her father; her hair was too dark, and her eyes to round; the Gelfling in Sami’s Thicket talked. Aileen wanted to let them. Yet when she looked at her daughter, she understood why they talked. Mera asked too many questions; when she needed to talk, she fell stubbornly silent. She ran to the Landstrider’s paddock before she learned Thra’s prayer; put her hand on one of them without protection. When Aileen gave her her pelts, the childling wept; for the life that had been lost. For as long as the soil was earthen, the Spriton princess had been given a Strider, to bear her strongly on its back so that she could take its name. But Aileen gave her daughter no Strider. She named the girl Mera and any who dared go against her were stripped of their houses and fields. Mera was Spriton’s all-Maudra - she would not give into the useless dreams of the peasantry. 

Mera remembered it, later. 

The fur had been so soft, beneath; she had wanted to breathe it in always. The Landstrider’s heartbeat had floated through all of its limbs. Mera had sensed something bright in it; golden. She had reached her hand forward to touch it, and that’s when her mother had wrenched her away. But in that moment a vision had come over her; trine’s worth of pain and of suffering, under the rule of a Maudra who possessed no desire to care for her people. Mera had seen the woman’s rich silks, the bracelets that hung on her wrists. But Mera had not seen the woman’s face. 

As she dreamed of it, now, she did. 

She wore a red scarf, checked with white Spriton daisies. She could be in terms sinuous and sharp; in council, she would barely speak a word. 

It woke Mera up screaming, and longing, again, for the feel of a Strider beneath her. On nights like this, she would ride the Thicket up to Yal’kanasi; follow the river that flowed past the fields. She would tumble off her Strider’s back and wash her face by the silvery light of the moon; in the mirror of the water, she would see the demon Maudra wasn’t her at all. But Mera, the Spriton’s rider-queen, had never ridden a Landstrider. If she so much as touched one, a paralyzing fear would consume her; she would retch and convulse in the throes of a Seeing-One’s fit. _Will I ride?_ She asks Aughra, in her nightmares. _I don’t care if we win, just tell me if I’ll ride!_

_You will ride, little one,_ Aughra says, _But it won't be a Strider._

“Maudra?” She hears. 

For, of course, she has ridden nowhere. She is sobbing on the floor of a tent, on the pelt of a different animal. The girl who comes to her is no more than nineteen trine old.

“Brea,” She says. The name is supplied by her muscles, but Mera doesn’t know how she placed it. “Yes, my princess, forgive me.” 

“A princess is less than a Maudra,” The Vapran Gelfling says, “I’ll get you some water; that will ease your ailments. Aughra says we should meet with the council at first light; the Maudras should, anyways. Perhaps they’ll let me listen again - wouldn’t that just be lovely, Maudra?” 

“Yes,” Mera says, “It would be lovely.” 

“What will you say?” Brea asks. It brings Mera up short. 

“Excuse me?”

“At the council,” Asks Brea, “What will you say? The Spriton control half of Thra - we can’t win the war without your crops.”

“My people’s” Says Mera. “I’m sorry, princess. My people tend the crops; if we do win the war, it is all thanks to them.” 

“‘As knowledge comes from the sharing,” She quotes, “You are wise, Maudra Mera. I am gladdened your people have come to our aid.”

_Bless her_ , Mera thinks, _She is trying._

But she is too young to rule; too young to be a princess. Her soul is not like the Spritons; it is not the same one, recasted into a new vessel. It is squalling and infantile. It will take that one trine to learn the way of rule. She has had a choice, this one.

“You will come, won’t you?” Brea asks, “To the council?” 

“I wouldn’t miss it for Thra,” Says Mera - and this, indeed, is truth. She owes her people this at least; if she is unable to fight in the war, weakling as she is, she owes them knowing what terrors may come of it. 

“Good,” Brea tells her, “Everybody will be there.”

_Not everybody_ , thinks Mera. Her Gelfling will not be there; they are planting fields off of Stone-in-the-Wood as Mother Aughra bid them last. The Sifas will be off consulting their holy book. And something else troubles Mera -

“That Grottan girl,” She’s asking Brea, “Deethra. Do you think she will return?”

“How do you mean?” Brea asks. She is small and broken; Mera is jolted by the sudden change in her demeanor. It ought not to surprise her so; they were friends, she’s heard, from the others. The Stonewood Rian does not mourn her loss by himself. She was a child of Thra - isn’t that what Aughra said? And yet she isn’t anymore. The Darkness has severed her bond, and Mera thinks of it, as she is sure the rest of them do. For she knows what it means - to be separate, cleaved, from that which is meant to define one. No Gelfling in Thra knows it better.

“I mean her spirit,” Says Mera, “Inside of her body. Do you think it will come back to us?”

“For Rian’s sake-” 

“My mother did that,” Mera says. It hurts her to say it, like dragging a rope tied of thorns up her throat. She says it anyways. “For so-and-so’s sake. Have you heard of my mother, young childling?” 

“Aileen of Spriton,” Brea says, as though reciting from a book, “She plunged the Spriton clan into a Dark Age, they say.”

“She liked to hide,” Says Mera, “In the wills of other Gelfling. Her own will was vicious, and strong; but in cloaking it, she assured her position among the nobility. It is what your sister did - did in the past,” Mera hastens, “Not now. She’s learned from it well. I pray that you never have to.” 

“Forgive me,” Says Brea, “My mother didn’t talk about the Spritons. Is it - is it because of yours, do you think, Maudra Mera?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Mera says - 

And in that moment, she sees it, what’s escaped her these twenty-six trine. She sees the mirthful bauble that lies within the strands of her immortal soul; that ties the Spriton to the Skeksis, no matter which side they fight on.

Of all the clans of Gelfling, the Spriton alone know deceit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a glimpse into my mind through the songs that I couldn't stop bopping while writing: 
> 
> _Living Proof_ by Gregory Alan Isakov
> 
> _Up All Night_ by The War on Drugs
> 
> _June_ by Florence and The Machines
> 
> And, finally, 
> 
> _Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell_ by The Flaming Lips

**Author's Note:**

> I find it helpful to listen to music while writing, and interesting to get back into that headspace by listening to the same songs afterwards. If any of you wish to join me in that headspace, here are four songs I couldn't stop jamming out to while writing this chapter: 
> 
> _Skinny Love_ by Bon Iver
> 
> _Piano Man_ by Billy Joel
> 
> _Run_ by Joji
> 
> And, finally, 
> 
> _Stay Off My Mind_ by Skott


End file.
